Friday, May 25, 2007

Stewardship starting next week

This is a new blog for the Riverdale Farm Community Stewardship team organized by Green Toronto. I was part of this team in 2006 and I will post items throughout the summer to talk about the various activities that will take place. Here's a sample of the kind of activities that the stewards might take part in.

In August 2006, the team took part in a monitoring session of the sanctuary pond to study the water quality of the site. The study involved taking samples from the pond and collecting insects from these samples.We worked with members of Citizens' Environment Watch, which organizes community-based ecological monitoring and stewardship programs. They use benthic inverterbrates, or "water bugs" as biological indicators to assess water quality. In order to collect these samples, we had to get into the pond wearing hip waders and using nets to try to pick up as many "bugs" as possible.